[WoW] Death Knights Hoo!: Druids don't need shields to tank, and neither do we!

Septus

I'm gonna guess that corpse explosion won't work on mobs killed by other players, but I do expect lots of in-party hilarity of blowing up a corpse before a player can get to it to skin it.

I imagine loot will persist through the explosion, but not skinning/herbing rights etc.

Arkady

Corpse explosion is glorious. Also, resto druids = totally fucked by dk's.

Septus

After actually looking up the Death Knight's talent tree itself, I can safely say that I love and adore every single thing about them.

Dhalphir

Arkady wrote: »

resto druids = totally fucked by dk's.

TheGerbil

Guys guys guys, is Gnömercy taken?

edit: best top post ever.

Nerdgasmic

Septus wrote: »

After actually looking up the Death Knight's talent tree itself, I can safely say that I love and adore every single thing about them.

Any links? Googling reveals nothing but fan speculejaculation.

Also, guys, guys-


Necrognomicon!

willmannyeatthat

Death Knight talents and spells look like typical blizzard. They make the class fun first then think about balancing it later. They did this in WC3. Whenever a new hero came out, they made them overpowered so people would play them. Then gave them the nerf bat after a few months. I feel that the death knight will meet the same fate.

rehtonAesoohC

Dhalphir wrote: »

Arkady wrote: »

resto druids = totally fucked by my new dk.

Fixed.

Run in fear druids. Run in fear.

Septus

willmannyeatthat wrote: »

Death Knight talents and spells look like typical blizzard. They make the class fun first then think about balancing it later. They did this in WC3. Whenever a new hero came out, they made them overpowered so people would play them. Then gave them the nerf bat after a few months. I feel that the death knight will meet the same fate.

I don't know about you, but their power has little to do with why I love them. They've got the best thing about warriors, the way that plate armor and huge 2 handers look, but they've actually got really nifty abilities that warriors don't, like summoning pets, self and group movement speed buffs, and their self res ability. They've also got a really nice take on melee dps(and presumably tanking, but I can't identify which tree is the best for tanking), through self heals and life leeching, as well as parry activated abilities.

They're just cool.

Here's the talent tree, compiled from datamining talents. http://war-tools.com/t52360.html

willmannyeatthat

Septus wrote: »

willmannyeatthat wrote: »

Death Knight talents and spells look like typical blizzard. They make the class fun first then think about balancing it later. They did this in WC3. Whenever a new hero came out, they made them overpowered so people would play them. Then gave them the nerf bat after a few months. I feel that the death knight will meet the same fate.

I don't know about you, but their power has little to do with why I love them. They've got the best thing about warriors, the way that plate armor and huge 2 handers look, but they've actually got really nifty abilities that warriors don't, like summoning pets, self and group movement speed buffs, and their self res ability. They've also got a really nice take on melee dps(and presumably tanking, but I can't identify which tree is the best for tanking), through self heals and life leeching, as well as parry activated abilities.

They're just cool.

Here's the talent tree, compiled from datamining talents. http://war-tools.com/t52360.html

Oh I agree with you. They are very cool. I just feel like there will be exploits in this class and then blizzard comes down with a legendary nerf bat and makes the class lose it's charm. Plus we dont know if these talents/spells will make it to beta/live.

Dissociater

Septus wrote: »

willmannyeatthat wrote: »

Death Knight talents and spells look like typical blizzard. They make the class fun first then think about balancing it later. They did this in WC3. Whenever a new hero came out, they made them overpowered so people would play them. Then gave them the nerf bat after a few months. I feel that the death knight will meet the same fate.

I don't know about you, but their power has little to do with why I love them. They've got the best thing about warriors, the way that plate armor and huge 2 handers look, but they've actually got really nifty abilities that warriors don't, like summoning pets, self and group movement speed buffs, and their self res ability. They've also got a really nice take on melee dps(and presumably tanking, but I can't identify which tree is the best for tanking), through self heals and life leeching, as well as parry activated abilities.

They're just cool.

Here's the talent tree, compiled from datamining talents. http://war-tools.com/t52360.html

Wow some of those, by today's standards are so overpowered. It makes me all the more curious to see how they tweak other classes. There are a lot of talents in here which really reduce magic damage and the like. This seems like a really badass class, I love the unholy tree.

Wavechaser

So is it just me or can you basically take "Runic Power" replace it with "Rage" and have the exact same thing? Looking at the talents and how they work, it seems like it's the exact same principal, just a different name.

Septus

Wavechaser wrote: »

So is it just me or can you basically take "Runic Power" replace it with "Rage" and have the exact same thing? Looking at the talents and how they work, it seems like it's the exact same principal, just a different name.

Well, it's similar, but you gain runic power from using abilities and probably not from doing damage, and it's the reverse for warriors.

<3

looks like

blood = dps
frost = pvp
unholy = tank

Wavechaser

From everything I read, using abilities uses Runic Power.

ie: On the last talent in the frost tree, you can freeze X # of enemies for X seconds depending on how much Runic Power you use. Seems like rage to me.

Munkus Beaver

You have three different rune types that you use, from what I read, and before you go into battle you can slot your bar with different runes to activate different abilities.

i.e. you might just want mostly blood runes for PvP or unholy runes for tanking or whatever.

-SPI-

There's the two ability resources. Runes and Runic Power.

The resource mechanics for death knights are runes and runic power. A skilled death knight makes efficient, timely use of runes and runic power to maximize his or her damage-dealing or tanking abilities.

* Runes: Every death knight ability requires runes, which come in three varieties: blood, frost, and unholy. Depending on the ability, it may require runes of a single type or a combination of types. When a rune is used, it has a cooldown period before it can be used again. Death knights can customize which array of six runes to have available at a given time, which can aid their ability to perform certain roles. For example, a tanking death knight may wish to load his or her rune array with more Frost runes.
* Runic Power: As rune abilities are used, the death knight also generates another resource called runic power. The death knight will have certain abilities that consume all available runic power, with varying levels of effectiveness based on total runic power spent. Similar to a warrior’s rage, runic power decays over time if not spent.

Septus

Wavechaser wrote: »

From everything I read, using abilities uses Runic Power.

ie: On the last talent in the frost tree, you can freeze X # of enemies for X seconds depending on how much Runic Power you use. Seems like rage to me.

Certain abilities specifically state that they use all runic power, or some runic power per second. Blizzard has specifically stated that using runes themselves, which power abilities, is what charges runic power.

The Plain Girl From The Low-Quality American Remake Of The Office wrote: »

looks like

blood = dps
frost = pvp
unholy = tank

See, I thought Blizzard said the frost tree would be the tanking tree, and the frost presence certainly is, but the blood tree kind of seems like it would be the optimal tree for mitigation and healing.(depending a lot on how bone armor works.

<3

I thought they tank by using diseases? looks like all the disease spells are in Unholy.

edit: t Septus, Blood has parry but I guess it's kind of like Retribution tree.

Septus

The Plain Girl From The Low-Quality American Remake Of The Office wrote: »

I thought they tank by using diseases? looks like all the disease spells are in Unholy.

I don't recall Blizz saying anything to that effect, or actually anything at all pertaining to how they gain threat, but I'm sure that'll just be based on damage in general, and any high threat abilities(perhaps the frost tree is for high threat).

-SPI-

From the Lich King site itself:

* Blood: Talents in this tree focus on damage-dealing abilities. Blood Presence increases damage output by a percentage.
* Frost: Talents in this tree focus on tanking abilities. Frost Presence increases threat and lowers damage taken by a percentage.
* Unholy: Talents in this tree have a variety of functions including summons, diseases, and PvP-focused abilities. Unholy Presence increases attack speed and reduces the global cooldown on death knight abilities.

The presences are self only paladin style auras that compliment the talent trees.

Septus

Hmm, it seems that Death Grip is their taunt and Blood Boil is their aoe taunt(and only affects diseased targets, will their aoe taunt not work on immune enemies?), both of which have reduced cooldown from an unholy tree talent.

I'm confused, and I think the devs are as well, about which tree, if any will have the main tanking focus.

Arkady

I am underwhelmed by those talent trees (except blood which looks awesome). The frost tree as is lacks anything to really make it a good tank tree. It gets like toughness, and 1 AE ability to generate more threat and then piles and piles of cc. So unless DK tanking is going to be done by snaring everything and running the fuck around, I'm pretty unimpressed. Especially since the best talent for their "niche" is balls deep in unholy.

And unholy is just silly. Blood was the only tree that struck me as solid and viable and actually really well designed for the role, but even then I have a hard time believing heart strike will make it in as is. I guess what I'm saying is I don't buy those talent trees. Some of it seems legit, but if those go live as is, I feel a lot of pity for dk tanks.

MuddBudd

Arkady wrote: »

I am underwhelmed by those talent trees (except blood which looks awesome). The frost tree as is lacks anything to really make it a good tank tree. It gets like toughness, and 1 AE ability to generate more threat and then piles and piles of cc. So unless DK tanking is going to be done by snaring everything and running the fuck around, I'm pretty unimpressed. Especially since the best talent for their "niche" is balls deep in unholy.

And unholy is just silly. Blood was the only tree that struck me as solid and viable and actually really well designed for the role, but even then I have a hard time believing heart strike will make it in as is. I guess what I'm saying is I don't buy those talent trees. Some of it seems legit, but if those go live as is, I feel a lot of pity for dk tanks.

They remind me of early druid trees. A little wacky because even the devs weren't quite sure to do with them.

As people work the kinks out of the playstyle, they will be improved I'm sure.

Septus

Oh, I agree that the tanking seem unorganized, but I do like unholy for damage dealing as well as blood.

-SPI-

I actually really like the look of the frost tree for tanking just because (so far) it looks so different to tanking as it is in the game now. Which it should be for a brand new class. If it were just the standard +threat stuff and stuff you'd expect from a tanking tree in the game now I wouldn't even look at it twice before speccing unholy or blood (which also look great) but Frost has me very intrigued.

Septus

Does "frozen" more often than not refer to a frost nova effect? What about the freezing trap or ice block effect? I'm wondering if any of the freeze effects that the DK has are full body freezes or just roots.

Mgcw

Frozen means the frost nova/frost bite roots effect, yes, AFAIK Shatter doesn't apply to freezing trap. In the leak there's a new Mage talent that "gives your frost damage spells a x% chance to apply an effect which increases the chance all attacks will hit the target by y% and the target is considered 'frozen' for z%" so there's an exception, I guess.

TheEmerged

Blue off the starboard bow!

Source = https://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=6441123344&sid=1&pageNo=2#34

First, the post Nethaera is responding to.

Avocado wrote:

One concern that will undoubtedly pop up is... if someone only has level 55+ characters on PVE servers, they will be able to create a level 55 DK on a PVP server. (according to your earlier post - no other restrictions at this point)

This allows people who have not leveled on a PVP server to jump in at a more competitive level and skip over a lot of grief. I'm not yet decided on whether this is a good idea or not, but some people will propose that a player will be required to have a level 55+ character on an existing PVP server to create a DK on a PVP server.

To which Nethaera replies....

Nethaera wrote:

We're aware of this concern, but don't have any plans to change this at this time.

Remember, even if you start there at 55, there will be a lot of other people working their way up to 80 and some bigger fish to watch out for in the pond, so to speak.

Now, I don't PvP myself, but isn't the concern that someone 'gets' to start at 55 without having to go through the horror of STV (and the like) just because they got to 55 on another server?

PierceNeck

The idea behind not being able to transfer from PvE to PvP, is that if you leveled on a PvE server, you never had to deal with the griefing while leveling. Which I can understand. Well, the problem is most of the griefing against you takes place in the 30's and 40's. Starting at 55 bypasses all that. And basically does exactly what they were trying to prevent by not allowing PvE to PvP transfers. The real issue is why wont they enable PvE to PvP transfers, then?

autono-wally, erotibot300

to make the elitists feel better

sedo

With the recent changes to quest exp, do most people even go to STV/hillsbrad anymore? I've always just abused VC or SM, then hit up the out of the way zones to keep ganking to a minimum.

815165

STV is still probably the best place in the 30's untill Desolace and Dustwallow.

Zython

sedo wrote: »

With the recent changes to quest exp, do most people even go to STV/hillsbrad anymore? I've always just abused VC or SM, then hit up the out of the way zones to keep ganking to a minimum.

I know I avoided those places at all costs on my lock and hunter.

Munkus Beaver

I thought you had to be 55 on the same server?

TheEmerged

Munkus Beaver wrote: »

I thought you had to be 55 on the same server?

Nope. Having a 55 on any server will allow you to create one DK per server.

Forar

Hence why I believe that, maybe with WLK, maybe sooner, we'll see PVE -> PVP transfers.

(Boo, hiss, etc, yes, I know)

Look where is the majority of the population now? In Outland. At 70. Probably in arenas, BG's, or dicking around in Shat.

Come WLK, where will the population be? Northrend.

Do people go to the old world now? Aside from alts? Sure. Rarely. Mostly when they have to (CoT or use the AH, for example).

So with WLK there will be two full tiers of content between new players on a server and the vast majority of the non-slowly-levelled-alt population.

Therefore, as underpopulated as things are now, I see no reason why they couldn't simply open up the transfer queues and rake in literally millions of dollars, possibly overnight. "But they'll bypass teh ganking!" What ganking? Everyone'll be in Northrend. Go fuck over each other there! Or they'll just roll Deathknights, and skip 54 levels of it anyway, and do we really need another reason for everyone to roll dozens of deathknights all over the place?

(and with the usual disclaimer, I have no interest at all to transfer servers, PVP or otherwise)

Imperfect

That and honestly, why is Blizzard catering to fucktards anyway? I mean, seriously, who other than fucktards things that ganking lowbies is an integral part of the game?

[EDIT: Especially since Blizz seems to be working really hard on splitting up PvP gear and PvE gear - you bust your ass to get good PvE gear and transfer over, you're STILL only going to on-par with a guy who's been sort of busting his ass to get the appropriate PvP gear.]

FightTest

Despite having two 70s trapped on PvE servers that I wish were on PvP servers, they should never allow transfers from PvE to PvP. Death knights are one class out of 10, there's no reason to change a policy based on one class.

And having a 70 and a few 60s on PvP servers and a couple 70s on PvE servers I would honestly say the average player on a PvE server is worse than the PvP server players. Not saying raid level players are terribly different but your average Joe on a PvE server is definitely more casual than a PvP player. So frankly I'd rather see the gene pool kept separate.

Bottom line is if leveling up is so fast these days and so easy to do on a PvP server then do it.

Charus

TheEmerged wrote: »

Blue off the starboard bow!

Source = https://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=6441123344&sid=1&pageNo=2#34

First, the post Nethaera is responding to.

Avocado wrote:

One concern that will undoubtedly pop up is... if someone only has level 55+ characters on PVE servers, they will be able to create a level 55 DK on a PVP server. (according to your earlier post - no other restrictions at this point)

This allows people who have not leveled on a PVP server to jump in at a more competitive level and skip over a lot of grief. I'm not yet decided on whether this is a good idea or not, but some people will propose that a player will be required to have a level 55+ character on an existing PVP server to create a DK on a PVP server.

To which Nethaera replies....

Nethaera wrote:

We're aware of this concern, but don't have any plans to change this at this time.

Remember, even if you start there at 55, there will be a lot of other people working their way up to 80 and some bigger fish to watch out for in the pond, so to speak.

Now, I don't PvP myself, but isn't the concern that someone 'gets' to start at 55 without having to go through the horror of STV (and the like) just because they got to 55 on another server?

Something like that, and it's really kind of a bullshit argument. I've raised two characters so far above level 55 on PvP servers, and most Azeroth zones are so empty these days that the type of server you are on hardly makes a difference from 1 to 55. And these are on relatively high-pop servers (Blackrock and Emerald Dream), a few minutes looking at Census statistics could point you towards a dead server with a bad population imbalance where you could run a hunter or something through to "pay your dues" for a PvP death knight character and barely see anyone, let alone a hostile player if Blizzard decided to not allow PvP Death Knights without a PvP level 55+.